Journal of Chromatographic Science, Vol.

48, August 2010

Simultaneous Determination of Piracetam and its

Four Impurities by RP-HPLC with UV Detection
M. Saeed Arayne1,*, Najma Sultana2, Farhan Ahmed Siddiqui1, Agha Zeeshan Mirza1, Faiza Qureshi1, and M. Hashim Zuberi1
1Department of Chemistry, University of Karachi, Karachi-75270, Pakistan and 2Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, Faculty of
Pharmacy, University of Karachi, Karachi

Abstract plasma is reached within 30–90 min after oral administration.

A simple and rapid high-performance liquid chromatographic
method for the separation and determination of piracetam and its
four impurities, 2-oxopyrrolidin-1-yl)acetic acid, pyrrolidin-2-one,
methyl (2-oxopyrrolidin-1-yl)acetate, and ethyl (2-oxopyrrolidin-1-
yl)acetate, was developed. The separation was achieved on a
reversed-phase C18 Nucleosil column (25 cm × 0.46 cm, 10 µm).
The mobile phase is composed of an aqueous solution containing
0.2 g/L of triethyl amine–acetonitrile (85:15, v/v). The pH of the
mobile phase was adjusted to 6.5 with phosphoric acid at a flow
rate of 1 mL/min at ambient temperature and UV detection at
205 nm. The developed method was found to give good separation
between the pure drug and its four related substance. The
polynomial regression data for the calibration plots showed good
linear relationship in the concentration range of 50–10,000 ng/mL,
25–10,000 ng/mL, 45–10,000 ng/mL, 34–10,000 ng/mL, and
55–10,000 ng/mL, respectively, with r2 = 0.9999. The method was
validated for precision, accuracy, ruggedness, and recovery. The
minimum quantifiable amounts were found to be 50 ng/mL of
piracetam, 25 ng/mL of 2-oxopyrrolidin-1-yl)acetic acid, 45 ng/mL
of pyrrolidin-2-one, 34 ng/mL of methyl (2-oxopyrrolidin-1-
yl)acetate, and 55 ng/mL of ethyl (2-oxopyrrolidin-1-yl)acetate.
Statistical analysis proves that the method is reproducible and
selective for the estimation of piracetam as well as its related
substance. As the method could effectively separate the drug from
the related substances, it can be employed as a stability-indicating
one. The proposed method shows high efficiency, allowing the
separation of the main component piracetam from other
impurities.
Until yet, no metabolite of piracetam has been discovered. After
30 h, piracetam gets eliminated in urine, and the tiny proportion
of the dosage excreted with urine is independent of the dose
administered.
Piracetam is a white powder and is freely soluble in water, sol-
uble in alcohol, and slightly soluble in methylene chloride (3). It
possesses no fluorescent properties and has low absorption in UV
radiation with a maximum peak of absorption at 197 nm. The
chemical structure of the molecule presented in Figure 1 can be
predicted as a flexible molecule due to a variety of hydrogen
bonds giving conformational polymorphs (4). In order to charac-
terize piracetam, the purity of the active substance can be
checked by several techniques (5,6). The determination of pirac-
etam by fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) (6)
doesn’t merit much application as it could not determine all four
known impurities but only one (pyrrollidine acetic acid) for syn-
thesis control only. The other method that employs thin-layer
chromatography (TLC) (5) does seperate piracetam and its four
impurities in 45 min but could not be used for the quantitative
determination in pharmaceutical formulations. Many high-per-
formance liquid chromatography (HPLC) separation methods

Introduction

Piracetam (2-oxo-pyrrolidin-1-yl)-acetamide is a nootropic

psychopharmacological agent having a variety of physiological
effects that may result from the restoration of cell membrane flu-
idity. It is used for the treatment of patients suffering from patho-
logical, neurosensitive, and cognitive deficits, brain-organic
psychosyndromes (e.g., primary degenerative dementia), ver-
tigo, and myoclonus of cortical origin (1,2). Piracetam is
absorbed almost completely and quickly, and the highest level in
Figure 1. Structural formulas of piracetam and its impurities.
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed: e-mail msarayne@gmail.com.

Reproduction (photocopying) of editorial content of this journal is prohibited without publisher’s permission. 589
 Journal of Chromatographic Science, Vol. 48, August 2010

were developed for quantification of piracetam from medicine The objective of this research was to develop and validate a
mixtures (7–15). Capillary electrophoretic methods are also simple, reliable, rapid, economical, and sensitive method for
reported, which offer very similar results (migration times and quantitative determination of piracetam and its related sub-
limits of quantification) to that of HPLC ones (retention times stances, degraded products, and impurities in pharmaceutical
and lower limits of quantification) (16,17). HPLC methods were formulation and in raw form. The method can be used for quan-
developed for determination of piracetam in plasma using dif- tification of piracetam with its impurities in pharmaceutical for-
ferent parameters and liquid chromatography devices. Starting mulation and to validate the procedures in order to demonstrate
with a simple determination of piracetam, after protein precipi- its good analytical and statistical parameters with respect to the
tation, a quantification limit of 1 µg/mL was obtained by using a pharmacokinetic and bioequivalence studies regulations
mobile phase of perchloric acid in a short SpheriSorb S5 amino (19–21).
column and detection at 200 nm (18). Other methods (8–15) The major advantage of the proposed methods is that four
applied extraction (liquid–liquid and solid-phase extraction) impurities and piracetam can be determined on a single chro-
using isocratic elution, similar UV detection but having different matographic system without changing the chromatographic
compositions of mobile phases and flow rates. The quantification system, which would be suitable for routine use in quality con-
limits were within 3–4 µg/mL yet with different retention times trol with regards to the wide range of concentration in plasma
differed significantly from 3.3 (14) to 6 min (12). samples and large number of samples needed to be analyzed in a
short time.
Table I. Linearity, Accuracy, and Precision of Piracetam and its
Impurities By the Proposed Method
Experimental
Added conc. Found conc. % Recovery % RSD*
Drug (ng/mL) (ng/mL) (mean) intra-day inter-day
Materials and reagents
Piracetam 50 48.46 96.92 2.687 3.12 All reagents were of analytical reagent-grade. Potassium dihy-
100 98.16 98.16 0.775 1.29 drogen orthophosphate, phosphoric acid triethyl amine, sodium
250 243.19 97.28 0.854 1.05 sulfate, sodium octane sulfonate, and HPLC-grade acetonitrile
500 489.44 97.89 3.617 2.55 were purchased from Merck (Darmstadt, Germany). Distilled
1000 991.13 99.11 1.075 2.17 and deionized water was used throughout the study. Piracetam
5000 5000.00 100.00 2.771 1.95 and impurities were obtained from UCB (Brussels, Belgium).
10000 9990.03 99.90 2.434 3.46 Nootropil 800 mg tablets were purchased from a local market.
Impurity 1 25 24.32 97.26 2.669 3.14
50 49.22 98.43 0.770 2.10
Instrumentation
100 99.55 99.55 1.498 2.60
500 493.23 98.65 0.936 1.70
The development and validation of the assay was performed on
1000 996.73 99.67 1.943 1.50 an HPLC system consisting of an LC-10 AT VP Shimadzu (Kyoto,
Japan) pump and SPD-10AV VP Shimadzu UV visible detector. A
Nucleosil C18 column (25 cm × 0.46 cm, 10 µm) was used for sep-
5000 5000.00 100.00 1.855 0.94
10000 10153.82 101.54 2.095 2.50
Impurity 2 45 44.46 98.81 3.005 2.10 aration. The chromatographic and integrated data were recorded
90 89.05 98.94 1.266 0.88 using a CBM-102 communication Bus Module Shimadzu on a P-
250 249.42 99.77 2.157 3.10 IV PC loaded with Class–GC software.
500 496.78 99.36 2.251 2.30
1000 1003.11 100.31 1.272 1.40 Chromatography
5000 5000.00 100.00 2.414 2.20
The mobile phase consisted of an aqueous solution containing
10000 10103.38 101.03 1.356 2.60
Impurity 3 34 32.97 96.96 1.632 2.20
acetonitrile–0.2 g/L solution of triethyl amine (15:85) with pH
80 78.29 97.86 2.349 2.90
6.5 adjusted with phosphoric acid. The flow rate was 1 mL/min.
250 248.68 99.47 0.856 1.50 The detections were made at 205 nm.
500 492.83 98.57 1.478 2.10
1000 993.58 99.36 1.276 2.18 Standard solutions preparation
5000 5000.00 100.00 1.034 1.24 Accurately weighed 10 mg of piracetam and its impurities
10000 10009.24 100.09 0.949 1.62 were individually transferred to 100-mL volumetric flasks sepa-
Impurity 4 55 53.20 96.73 2.841 2.05 rately, and appropriate dilution was made with the mobile phase.
100 97.22 97.22 2.332 3.14 The resulting solutions were sonicated for 25 min and filtered
250 250.71 100.28 0.864 1.58 through membrane filter. Final concentrations were
500 498.88 99.78 1.117 1.25
100.0 µg/mL. Aliquots of each solution were accordingly diluted
1000 995.04 99.50 1.411 0.94
5000 5000.00 100.00 1.096 2.28
with same solvent in order to obtain solutions with final concen-
10000 10046.00 100.46 0.799 1.66
trations of all drugs. All solutions were prepared fresh each day.

* RSD = Relative standard deviation, where n =5 for both intra- and inter-day. Calibration curves
Seven different concentration levels (50, 100, 250, 500, 1000,

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Journal of Chromatographic Science, Vol. 48, August 2010

5000, and 10,000 ng/mL) for piracetam; (25, 50, 100, 500, 1000, standard curves were prepared over a concentration range of 50,
5000, and 10,000 ng/mL) for 2-oxopyrrolidin-1-yl)acetic acid 100, 250, 500, 1000, 5000, and 10,000 ng/mL for piracetam; 25,
(impurity 1); (45, 90, 250, 500, 1000, 5000, and 10,000 ng/mL) 50, 100, 500, 1000, 5000, and 10,000 ng/mL for impurity 1; 45,
for pyrrolidin-2-one (impurity 2); (34, 80, 250, 500, 1000, 5000, 90, 250, 500, 1000, 5000, and 10,000 ng/mL for impurity 2; 34,
and 10,000 ng/mL) for methyl (2-oxopyrrolidin-1-yl)acetate 80, 250, 500, 1000, 5000, and 10,000 ng/mL for impurity 3; and
(impurity 3); and (55, 100, 250, 500, 1000, 5000, and 10,000 55, 100, 250, 500, 1000, 5000, and 10,000 ng/mL for impurity 4
ng/mL) for ethyl (2-oxopyrrolidin-1-yl)acetate (impurity 4) were (Table I). The data of peak area versus drug concentration was
obtained for each standard solution. Each solution was injected treated by linear least square regression analysis. The standard
in the chromatographic system (n = 5), and mean values of peak curves were evaluated for intra-day and inter-day reproducibility.
areas were plotted against concentrations. The curves were Linear regression characteristics of proposed method are given
adjusted by linear regression with the least mean squares in Table II.
method (22,23).
Precision and accuracy
Method validation Nootropil tablet solution mixtures containing known
The method was validated by using the ICH guideline (24). amounts of piracetam and its impurities were prepared and ana-
The selectivity, limits of detection and quantification, linearity, lyzed by HPLC. The accuracy of the method was checked for
precision, and accuracy were determined. Determination was three different concentrations. It was found that these additions
carried out using tablet formulation. The reversed-phase (RP)- were accurately reflected in their peak areas. All estimations
HPLC method that was presented has been proved successfully were repeated thrice, and the amounts of recovered drug were
in separation and simultaneous determination of all five com- calculated (Table III). The precision of the method was deter-
pounds. The developed method was validated for linearity, accu- mined as relative standard deviation (RSD) on replicate injec-
racy, precision, recovery, limit of detection, limit of tions (n = 5) of a standard solution as shown in Table III.
quantification, and ruggedness.
Limit of detection and limit of quantification
Linearity In order to estimate the limit of detection and limit of quan-
Stock solution of piracetam and its related substances (100 tification, mobile phase was injected six times, and the noise
µg/mL) were prepared individually in mobile phase. A series of level was determined. The limit of detection was calculated to be
three times the noise value and ten times the noise, which gave
Table II. Regression Characteristics of Piracetam and Impurities limit of quantification, and was also cross-checked by formulas
By the Proposed Method given below (Table IV).
3.3σ 10σ
Piracetam Impurity 1 Impurity 2 Impurity 3 Impurity 4 LOD = and LOD =
S S
r2 0.9999 0.9999 0.9999 0.9999 0.9999 where σ is the standard deviation of the lowest standard con-
Intercept 06.45 233.73 121.09 371.83 1032.7 centration and S is the slope of the standard curve. Analysis of
Slope 40.60 44.94 29.75 47.91 83.16 impurities in pharmaceutical formulation is indicated in Table V,
and all the results were found in accordance to acceptable limits.

Table III. Accuracy and Precision of Piracetam and its Robustness

Impurities in Nootropil Tablet By the Proposed Method The robustness of an analytical procedure is a measure of its
capacity to remain unaffected by small but deliberate variations
Added conc. Recovered conc. % %RSD
in method parameters and provides an indication of its reliability
(ng/mL) (ng/mL) Recovery (n = 5)
during normal usage. In order to study the robustness of the pro-
Piracetam 800 810.2 101.25 1.56
posed method, intentional modifications in pH values of the
1000 987.8 98.78 0.98 mobile phase was made. It was observed that in every engaged
1200 1208 100.7 1.27 condition, the chromatographic parameters were in accordance
Impurity 1 800 813.4 101.67 2.2 with the established value (25). A change of ±0.2 unit of pH of the
1000 991.2 99.12 1.4 mobile phase (approximately 6.3–6.7) and variation influenced
1200 1187.2 98.93 1.7 by different lots of the same type of column had no considerable
Impurity 2 800 792.7 99.09 0.84 impact on chromatographic performance.
1000 1002.2 100.22 0.71
1200 1221.2 101.77 1.7
Impurity 3 800 808.4 101.05 0.64 Table IV. LOD and LOQ Values of Piracetum and its Impurities
1000 1012.7 101.27 2.14
1200 1213.8 101.15 1.27 Impurity 1 Impurity 2 Impurity 3 Impurity 4 Piracetum
Impurity 4 800 814.7 101.84 1.34
1000 1024.1 102.41 1.8 LOQ (ng/mL) 3.12 14.84 3.92 16.06 1.42
1200 1209.7 100.8 0.96 LOD (ng/mL) 0.93 4.45 1.17 4.82 0.42

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 Journal of Chromatographic Science, Vol. 48, August 2010

Tailing (symmetry) factor (T) and number of theoretical plates
(N) were calculated by formulas: T = W/(2Wa) and
N = 5.545(tR/W1/2)2, where W is the peak width at 5% height from
baseline, Wa the peak front edge width at the same height, and
W1/2 is the peak width at half height.
According to the data of robustness test study, we proposed
criteria for system suitability test (tailing factors < 2, numbers of
theoretical plates > 4000), and repeatability (RSD) of five repli-
cates must not be more than 1.5 (peak area for replicate anal-
ysis). It is used to verify that the resolution and repeatability of
the system are adequate for the analysis of the intended drug.
Analysis of the pharmaceutical formulation
To determine the content of piracetam from the Nootropil
tablet label claim (piracetam 800 mg per tablet), 20 tablets equiv-
alent to 10 mg of piracetam were powdered, weighed accurately,
and transferred to a 100-mL volumetric flask. Mobile phase was
used for extraction. To ensure complete extraction of the drug, it
was sonicated for 30 min, and the solution was made up to 100
mL. The resulting solution was filtered, and the supernatant was
diluted to obtain the desired concentration with the mobile
phase and injected. The analysis was repeated in triplicate. A
placebo tablet was also subjected to the same extraction process
as discussed earlier before injection. The possibility of excipient
interference in the analysis was studied.
silanol on the surface of silica stationary phase support particles.
Acidic or neutral compounds are not affected, and some basic
compounds are more adversely affected than others. Triethyl
amine is commonly added to mobile phases for this purpose.
Triethyl amine interacts strongly with silanols and inhibits them
from interacting with amines in your sample.
Acetonitrile–0.2 g/L solution of triethyl amine at pH 6.5 in the
proportion 15:85 (v/v) was found to be a suitable solvent system.
When 50:50 (v/v) was employed as the mobile phase, poor reso-
lution was obtained between the drug and its degradation
product.
The effect of sodium sulfate in mobile phase was also checked.
It is observed that sodium sulfate has the most important effect
on chromatographic behavior. This effect is negative for the five
separations, which means that an increase of the amount of
sodium sulfate will decrease the resolution of the peak pairs
studied. The effect of sodium 1-octanesulfonate in mobile phase
was also studied and has a positive effect on the resolution of the
impurities, which means that an increase of the amount of ion
pairing agent improves resolution. Initially, the experiment was
carried out with ion pairing before testing both sodium-1-
octanesulonate and triethyl amine. Later, triethyl amine was
selected for method validation.
Figure 1 shows the molecular structures of piracetam and its
structurally related impurities impurity 1, impurity 2, impurity
3, and impurity 4 studied in the present investigation. All these

Results and Discussion Table V. Analysis of Impurities of Piracetam in Nootropil Tablet

(800 mg)

Optimization of solvent system Impurity 1 Impurity 2 Impurity 3 Impurity 4

Varying compositions of acetonitrile–0.2 g/L solution of tri- Sample (%recovery) (%recovery) (%recovery) (%recovery)
ethyl amine at pH 6.5 viz. 25:75, 40:60, 50:50, 75:25, and 15:85
(v/v) were evaluated as mobile phase in order to achieve good res- 1 0.050 0.040 – 0.04
olution between the drug and its impurities. 2 0.030 0.036 0.01 –
A common cause of peak tailing in RP-HPLC is the secondary 3 – – – –
4 – 0.004 0.02 –
retention that occurs when an ion exchange interaction takes
5 0.007 – 0.05 –
place between a positively charged solute (amine) and an acidic

Figure 2. Representative chromatogram of piracetam and its four impurities. Figure 3. Representative chromatogram of piracetam (using NOOTROPIL
Peak 1 = impurity 1, peak 2 = piracetam, peak 3 = impurity 2, peak 4 = impu- tablet) and addition its four impurities. Peak 1 = impurity 1, peak 2 = pirac-
rity 3, peak 5 = impurity 4. etam, peak 3 = impurity 2, peak 4 = impurity 3, peak 5 = impurity 4.

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Journal of Chromatographic Science, Vol. 48, August 2010
materials were subjected to separation by RP-HPLC. The sepa-
ration and resolution were found to be pH-dependent. Due care
was given to the pH of the mobile phase while standardizing the
HPLC conditions. pH values between 6 and 7 were found to be
the optimum values for good separation. Acetonitrile was used
an organic solvent modifier to improve the separation. The
effect of concentration of acetonitrile and temperature of the
column on resolution was also studied. In the optimized condi-
tion, column temperature was set 40°C, but in this condition
the piracetam peak was merged with a neighboring peak, so val-
idation was conducted at room temperature 25°C. The chro-
matographic separation was also found to be dependent on the
concentration of triethyl amine aqueous solution and the best
separation was found to be optimum with acetonitrile–0.2 g/L
aqueous solution of triethyl amine (15:85, v/v). The retention
time of piracetam obtained 3.6 min, and its impurity 1, 2, 3, and
4 were obtained at 3, 4, 7, and 13.2 min, respectively. A typical
chromatogram of a synthetic mixture containing piracetam
and its impurities is shown in Figure 2. Two sample chro-
matograms (using Nootoopil tablet), one with the addition of
impurities and the other without any impurities are presented
in Figure 3–4, respectively. The peaks were identified by
injecting and comparing the retention times with those of
authentic standards. Reproducible peak shapes were obtained
under the optimum conditions. It can be clearly seen that the
shapes of these peaks are undistorted. Therefore, the symmetry
C18 column was preferred over the other column, and it
provided better resolution of the peaks with symmetry and
reproducibility.
All calibration curves showed linearity over a concentration
range. The correlation coefficients (r2) obtained with linear
regression of curve were above 0.9999 for every impurity and
piracetam. Linearity data show the concentration interval of
studied piracetam in which the intensity of the detector
response is proportional to the concentration of the analyzed
substance. The theoretically determined values of quantitation
limits were crossed checked by actual analysis of these concen-
Figure 4. Representative chromatogram of piracetam (using NOOTROPIL
tablet) impurities. Peak 1 = impurity 1, peak 2 = piracetam, peak 3 = impurity
2, peak 4 = impurity 3, peak 5 = impurity 4.
trations using proposed methods. The consequent RSD
amongst these values are within acceptable limits (< 3.5%).
Table II shows the statistical treated linear regression data of
piracetam and all impurities.
The RSD values were less than 3.5%, indicating precision of
the method. The recovery values obtained were between
98.78–101.25% for piracetam, 99.12–101.67% for impurity 1,
99.09–101.77% for impurity 2, 101.05–101.27% for impurity 3,
and 100.8–102.41% for impurity 4, as shown in Table III, con-
firming accuracy of the proposed method. The percentage of
recovery results is also presented in Table I. The excipients pre-
sent in pharmaceutical dosage forms do not interfere in the
analysis. The results prove specificity of the proposed methods.
Table V shows the analysis of all impurities in dosage formula-
tion.
A linearity relationship was evaluated across the range of ana-
lytical procedure. The linearity was performed over the range of
concentration 50, 100, 250, 500, 1000, 5000, and 10,000 ng/mL
for piracetam; 25, 50, 100, 500, 1000, 5000, and 10,000 ng/mL
for impurity 1; 45, 90, 250, 500, 1000, 5000, and 10,000 ng/mL
for impurity 2; 34, 80, 250, 500, 1000, 5000, and 10,000 ng/mL
for impurity 3; and 55, 100, 250, 500, 1000, 5000, and 10,000
ng/mL for impurity 4. The regression line was calculated as y =
Bx + D, where x was the drug concentration (ng/mL) and y was
the response (peak area expressed as AUC). D is the intercept,
and B is slope of regression line as mention in Table II. The cal-
ibration curve was obtained using the linear least squares
regression procedure; representative linear regression data of
five different analytes is shown in Table II. The correlation coef-
ficient (r2) value is 0.9999.
Stability of piracetam solution
The stability of the piracetam solutions during time was inves-
tigated. A solution of 10,000 ng/mL of piracetam was analyzed at
intervals of 0, 24, 48, and 72 h after storing the samples at room
temperature. It was found that up to 72 h the chromatographic
peak area of piracetam was not significantly changed. It can be
concluded that piracetam solution was stable at least for 72 h
after its preparations. This solution was also analyzed in the
HPLC system at 2, 4, 6, and 8 days when stored at –20°C, and no
significant change was found when compared with freshly pre-
pared samples.
Conclusion
An improved LC method was developed for the analysis of
piracetam with its impurities. This method does not only allows
complete separation of piracetam and its impurities but could
also be used for the quantitative analysis of these five compo-
nents in bulk drug as well as in dosage formulations up to less
than 17 ng/mL, as our method is selective and would not allow
interference of the excipients. The developed HPLC technique is
precise, specific, and accurate. The statistical analysis proves that
the method is reproducible and selective for the estimation of
piracetam with its impurities in bulk drug and pharmaceutical
formulations.
593

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